Tuesday, September 11, 2007

LMS: Herbie Vs H.E.R.B/I.E

I mean, who cares about EITHER Herbie? Did anyone really care who won a battle between the Love Bug volkswagon and the most annoying "member" of the Fantastic Four?

The only contact I'd want to have with Herbie the Love Bug is when he's got Lindsay Lohan as a passenger/driver. Or when Bruce Campbell is in there so I can have him regale me of stories of his experience in the Evil Dead movies. Even Herbie would crush Bumblebee in a fight...and Herbie can't transform!

H.E.R.B.I.E should win this battle easily though. After all, Mr Fantastic built him, and surely so intelligent a brain would at least think to install some weapons in his housesitter robot, yeah?

LAST MAN STANDING

Herbie vs. H.E.R.B.I.E.

Art by Jamal Igle

TALE OF THE TAPE

Herbie

H.E.R.B.I.E.

4'11"

Height

1 Meter

1742lbs.

Weight

800lbs.

3 1/2 ft.

Reach

20 ft.

Rice White

Paint Job

Pearly White

Yes

Seats Four

No

THE BATTLE... The sky is pink with pollution on a brisk Saturday evening in New York City—the very evening Herbie took one wrong turn, jackknifed the sidewalk and violently crashed headlights-first into the Baxter Building’s lobby. Nauseous from the blunt trauma, Herbie fails to notice the hovering robot from hell quickly advancing in his blind spot.

Security scanners buzzing to life with the anger of 10,000 wasps, H.E.R.B.I.E. emerges from the desolate shadows. “Intruder. You should not have come here!” shrieks the Fantastic Four’s furious security automaton, wasting no time in sending a white-hot electrical charge up the anthropomorphic Beetle’s rusty tailpipe. Horn blaring in pain, the violating volts simultaneously shatter the Bug’s windows and breaks a nail off the hand of lovely Lindsay Lohan, the strawberry-haired sexpot in the driver’s seat. Dented and dazed, Herbie can taste the grit lodged in his chassis. Hurriedly, he assesses the situation and adjusts his splintered mirrors. There’s simply no time to think about oil oozing from his gaping wounds as he shifts into high gear and plunges his windshield wipers with praying mantis accuracy into H.E.R.B.I.E.’s vulnerable robo-throat. A digitized death-wail fills the sky as the carnage-fueled car pops his hood and sends boiling acid spewing skyward from the bowels of his radiator. Burps and pops crackle forth from H.E.R.B.I.E.’s dissolving mainframe as he flips end over end in a symphony of burning wires and glass. Rising steadily from the marble floor, H.E.R.B.I.E. knows that, had he the capacity, he might respect his opponent’s fortitude. Instead, he’s been programmed to destroy the source of this grave violation, and lets fly a jet-propelled magnetic spike deep into the heart of Herbie’s undercarriage. “Threat eliminated,” responds the ’bot coldly, as Herbie backfires, sputters and sucks one last wind through his air intake valve. Now, ponders H.E.R.B.I.E., what to do with the petite redhead crawling from the rubble? He decides he may be artificially intelligent, but he’s not stupid…

Surrender? SURRENDER?!

Me Comic Book Guy! Me smash...er...geek you out!

Comic book geek extraordinaire at your service! As my friends always take great pleasure in reminding me: I'm a pop culture geek and a child of the 80s with too much useless information in my head. Now kneel before Zod!